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Feliform evolutionary timeline. All modern carnivorans, including cats, evolved from miacoids, which existed from approximately 66 to 33 million years ago.There were other earlier cat-like species but Proailurus (meaning "before the cat"; also called "Leman's Dawn Cat"), which appeared about 30 million years ago, is generally considered the first "true cat".
Results of phylogenetic research shows that the wild members of this genus evolved through sympatric or parapatric speciation, whereas the domestic cat evolved through artificial selection. [29] The domestic cat and its closest wild ancestor are diploid and both possess 38 chromosomes [ 30 ] and roughly 20,000 genes.
An example of a domesticated, indoor cat A domestic tabby cat The domestic cat originated from Near-Eastern and Egyptian populations of the African wildcat , Felis sylvestris lybica . The family Felidae , to which all living feline species belong, is theorized to have arisen about ten to eleven million years ago and is divided into eight major ...
The ancestors of these modern felines are thought to have evolved just under 10 million years ago. Believed to be larger than the species we recognize today, Europe’s cats would have inhabited ...
Pseudaelurus is a prehistoric cat that lived in Europe, Asia and North America in the Miocene between approximately twenty and eight million years ago. It is considered to be a paraphyletic grade ancestral to living felines and pantherines as well as the extinct machairodonts (saber-tooths), and is a successor to Proailurus.
Cat species vary greatly in body and skull sizes, and weights: The largest cat species is the tiger (Panthera tigris), with a head-to-body length of up to 390 cm (150 in), a weight range of at least 65 to 325 kg (143 to 717 lb), and a skull length ranging from 316 to 413 mm (12.4 to 16.3 in).
Unearthed in a rock layer dating back to the Triassic period, between 252 million and 201 million years ago, the Gondwanax paraisensis fossil comes from the time when dinosaurs as well as mammals ...
An enigmatic bipedal creature called Nyasasaurus from Tanzania, known from fragmentary fossils perhaps dating to 240–245 million years ago, represents what the earliest dinosaurs may have looked ...